The Trees are Just Wood
by Lvl2DragonTamer
Summary: A swirl glimmered silver on the right side of the road, flickering in and out of the shadow like heat over a grill. I glanced sidelong into the trees, half-expecting one of them to just roll into the middle of the road and laugh over the damage to my fender. FemKristoff, early/villainish-Elsa, ships ambiguous, AU.
1. Chapter 1

_Chapter 1_

* * *

I cracked open the can of coke and took a swig in the gas station's doorway. No harm in catching a minute of quiet before I headed back home. The breeze ruffled my hair, the summer dusk smelled like cut grass, and I had a taboo about eating or drinking in my pickup. Sven had managed to shimmy his head through the gap in the passenger window while I knocked back the soda. He barked when I made eye contact with him.

"I'm coming," I told him, but the mutt just whined. Nothing but pines ran down this stretch of the highway. They poked up into the glow of the horizon and rustled in the wind. The sun dripped down under the tree line. I tossed the empty can into the trash by the door.

I heard the gravel crunch up the road, and a girl say, "No, no, come on, you can do it. Almost there." She pedaled into the light of the gas station on a fixed gear bicycle. Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead, and her t-shirt to her body. I dragged my eyes away from the wrinkles tracking across her stomach. The bike's front tire sagged along the pavement. She stumbled off the seat and wheeled it up the lot. She waved at me. "They've got an air pump here, right?"

They didn't. I shook my head.

"Oh." She collapsed on the curb and let the bike clatter onto the pavement next to her. "That sucks."

She must have been one of the university students. Smart enough to fill in bubbles on a piece of paper, too dumb to fill up on air before pedalling out into the middle of nowhere on a gravel road. I fished my keys out of my pocket and headed back to my car. Sven clambered over the center console and pressed his nose against the glass while I jiggled the lock. "Hey, boy," I said. "Don't worry, we're going."

I tugged open the handle and one hundred and twenty pounds of wolfhound blasted out of the door and barreled over me. I landed on my ass. Sven bounded straight towards the college kid—she just had time to look up before he cleared the lot and started licking the hell out of her face. I dashed up, grabbed him by the collar, and hefted him off of her. "I'm so sorry, he's retarded." He pawed the air like a deranged, scruffy pony, and whined.

She was laughing. "No, he's a sweetheart, I needed that. Hey, cutie." She stood up and scratched the sides of his neck with her nails. He wrenched himself out of my grip and leaped. I swore. She just laughed harder and staggered a little under his weight as he managed to balance his paws on her shoulders. _I am going to get arrested._

"Down, Sven!"

He plopped his ass on the ground and looked up at me, tongue lolling, tail beating against the tarmac. He cocked his head to the side. _What'd I do?_

"I don't want to hear it, you piece of shit," I told him, and then, to the girl, "I am so sorry." I forget how crazy it looks for me to have imaginary conversations with my dog, regretted it the second it was out of my mouth, but she just stuck out her hand. "I'm Anna."

"Krista, but call me Kris." The mutt barked. "That's Sven."

"We've been acquainted," she said, grinning. She glanced from her feet, to me, to her feet again, swallowed, and spat out, "Hey, I know this is weird since we just, like, met, and you definitely don't have to, but, umm, I'm totally stranded out here. I need to go find my—I need to find Elsa, but there's no way in hell Dad was letting me take the car so I grabbed the bike but it's out of air and she's still at least a mile from here? I can pay you gas and totally buy you a pizza later, it would mean so much to me, Dad isn't going to get me so I'd be stuck walking the four miles back home."

"Woah, hold on. You biked four miles on a flat tire?"

She shrugged. "It wasn't really flat until the last one and a half. I live back in downtown Arendelle."

Sven barked. _Do it, you little shit._

I leveled a finger at him. _Shut up, I'm thinking._ He just thumped his tail against the ground harder. I raked my hand through my hair. "Twenty bucks."

She nodded. "Deal."

"Alright, get in. No food allowed."

"Yes!" she clapped her hands together and practically bounced to my pickup, even after scooping the bike into her arms. I moved to flip down the bed but she hefted the bike up and over the side before I could get to the lock. It banged, and somewhere to our left a flock of starlings screeched and took flight. "Thank you so, so much, I'm totally going to buy you like, ten pizzas, too." She buckled herself in before I even managed to get my door open. Sven bounded up into the cab. "You know the Pointe, a mile down? I'd bet anything she's there, she always used to go there to get away. Thank you."

I turned the key and the engine roared. "Thank the idiot in the back, not me."

She turned around and beamed at the dog. "Thank you, Sven." He barked, and licked her outstretched hand.

* * *

I slowed down to take us around a bend in the road. Anna fiddled with the radio. "What's your major?"

I snorted. "None, I work for a living. I'm an apprentice lineman."

Anna twisted the music off. "Hey! College is work. I'll have you know I have pulled multiple all nighters writing papers."

I grinned at her. "Oh, you stayed up all night typing and sitting down? Did you survive?"

She rolled her eyes. "Obviously. And anyway, shouldn't you call it line_woman_? If you're talking about yourself." Sven huffed. It was a suspiciously cheerful sounding huff. I glared over my shoulder at him, but he just panted at me. Mutt.

"No."

Anna scooted further into the chair and kicked her feet up on the dash. I let her. It needed cleaning, anyway. "What is your job, exactly? Not that I don't know what 'lineman' means. I'm just, you know, curious about what you do, specifically."

The sky glowed deep blue above us, lavender over the western horizon, but there was still enough light to see the cables stretch black above the treetops, and the poles lifting them up. I leaned over her and pointed. "Lineman as in power lines. When your power goes out on Christmas Eve, we're the ones straddling a pole in a blizzard so you can watch _It's a Wonderful Life_. The paycheck is good, and I get to travel, climb, and live outside. It's not a job for everyone, you've got to have something in you for it. It's my life."

Anna rolled down her window. The wind caught her ponytail and whipped it outside—she leaned halfway out the door, staring up at the powerlines, eyes and mouth open wide, hips twisted off the seat and angled towards me. The car slammed into a pothole. I swore and clutched the wheel. Eyes on the road. I heard her pull herself back inside the window. "That's really cool, actually. That stuff is way beyond me. Like magic."

The pines huddled up around the strip of road, blotting out the sky. I glanced back over at her. She was chewing on her lip and staring out the windshield. "So. What made Elsa decide to go camping?"

Anna blinked and glanced over to me. "Well, she's my sister, and she's like, super smart, right? Crazy smart, totally way smarter than me. And dad's a cardiologist, and he really wants her to do the same thing, keep the family name going, you know? And she totally could, because she is so. Fricken. Smart. Not like me." Anna's forehead fell against the window, _thunk_. "Like, she used to read geometry textbooks for fun when we were little. Stupid smart."

A swirl glimmered silver on the right side of the road, flickering in and out of the shadow like heat over a grill. Anna didn't react as we whizzed by, even though it hovered inches from the roadside and at eye level. _They're awake tonight. _I glanced sidelong into the trees, half—expecting one of them to just roll into the middle of the road and laugh over the damage it would do to my fender. I couldn't make out anything in the shadows.

"Anyway, she's a junior in college now, and she was pre—med. And Dad found her sketching again, and he was like," Anna cleared her throat and affected a voice an octave lower than her own, "'_Elsa, I don't see why you waste your time on this when you could be studying for the MCAT_,' and she was like, 'what if I don't want to take the MCAT,' and he was like, '_What_?' and she said she wanted to go to art school! And then he yelled about how he didn't want his tuition money to go to waste, and she yelled about how much she hated cutting up dead bodies or whatever, and he was like, 'why don't you be an engineer then since you're good at math?' and she was like, 'I need to get the things I see in my head out into the real world,' and then he said if she did art stuff she would starve and die in a gutter and then—she ran away. And my boyfriend let me borrow his bike because Dad wouldn't let me use the family car to go get her."

_Boyfriend. _I mentally added Anna and her wide eyes to my mental list of Things That Are Never Happening. "Your sister is going to get into some actual shit if she makes a habit out of running into the woods alone after dark."

I don't think she even heard me. "Whatever she needs to do, you know? I know you can't get hired that easy if you're an art major, and she'd have to redo all those semesters of classes, but if it makes her happy it's worth it, right? She can do it."

The headlights flashed onto a sign reading _North Pointe_. "We're here."

There was one other car parked at the Pointe, a silver Taurus. Anna unbuckled her seatbelt and ran up to it as I killed the engine. Sven slipped out the door after her. It was a scenic stop on the edge of the road, where the ground dropped out into a cliff and you could see over the treetops below, to the north. Steps tracked down the cliffside, and a picnic table squatted near the cliff's edge. I grabbed my flashlight out of the glove compartment.

"She's not in her car." Anna's voice sounded small, in the dark.

I climbed out of my pickup and aimed the light towards the picnic table. It had gotten even more scarred since I had last seen it—the surface scored with initials and badly etched hearts, free room gone long ago, half the marks scratched on top of each other.

"Elsa?" Anna leaned over the railing and yelled out over the treetops. "Elsa!"

Maybe she had taken a walk. Or maybe she had slipped. I stepped closer to the edge, heart in my throat. I had seen a corpse before. Just one. The dispatcher had called my crew in for a police and fire wiredown—a man had crashed into a pole and the EMS wouldn't, couldn't clear the scene because of the energized wire torn and lying on the ground. The man's blood had splattered across the bottom of the pole. It had gotten onto my boots when I dug my gaffs into the wood and hoisted myself up.

"Back up," I told Anna. She hesitated, but stepped back from the edge. I aimed the beam down the wooden stairs. They were empty. The path glimmered at the bottom. "Well, good news is that she didn't fall down the side."

"This doesn't make sense," Anna's voice sounded unnaturally high. "She just sits at the picnic table and sketches whenever she comes here." The girl bit her lip. "I'm calling her again."

Sven pushed his head under my left hand. I dug my fingers into his fur and scratched while Anna fumbled with her phone and raised it to her ear. Her hand trembled.

"She hung up on me," Anna tapped the screen, a solid block of white in the dim. "Thank God she's alive." Her phone _dinged_. "It's Elsa, she texted me. She says to go home."

I glanced out into the woods below—all black, no silver—and then up at Anna. "Maybe you should. If she doesn't want the help—"

"No. I'm finding my sister." The flash on Anna's phone flared to life. She held it up over her head, like a torch, and peered down the stairs. "You can go back if you want, though, thank you for the ride. Total lifesaver."

"You still owe me that twenty."

Anna grimaced. "About that. I kind of forgot my purse? Elsa should have her stuff though, she grabbed her backpack. But I can give you my phone number, so you can get it from me later."

Sven nudged my hand again. _She's going to trip and die on her own, and you won't get your twenty bucks._

"I'll come. Just let me get my gear." I grabbed my backpack out of the cab and slung it over my shoulder. I stepped out onto the first wooden stair, Sven close at my heel. It creaked under me, and I could see pits in the wood glare under the flashlight. Anna bumped into my back. "Keep three points of contact going down," I told her, and followed my own advice and put my hand on the rail. "Don't need you slipping. Sven, wait by the car."

The mutt scrambled past me.

"Oh, come on. Sven!" I heard him bark again, from somewhere below us in the shadows. "Dammit. Okay, come on. Hopefully she didn't get far."


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter 2_

* * *

Anna heard them before I did. She ran off the path.

"Dammit, Anna!" Sven took off after her. I followed, slower, taking my time to slide under a branch and walk around a fallen tree. The leaves overhead blotted out the stars. They were playing music, bass thumping—she was going to get to them without me. "Anna, that's not your sister!"

"But they might have seen her!"

Good news: the sound was easy to follow. Anna kept stumbling and swearing to herself, Sven kept barking, and the music—they had wrestled a stereo from somewhere. The song had a pounding drum and a lilting melody, plucked out by some kind of synth. It keened out above and below itself, wailing from another world, another time, minor and fervent and feverish. I grew up with that shit. Still made me shiver to hear it again. One time it had gone on for hours, and I had buried my face in Sven's scruffy neck and begged them to stop singing. The hound had howled over my crying, and I was grateful since that almost drowned out the sound. They had laughed, and ruffled my hair, and told me to go away for a few days, to go climbing.

I could make out a campfire's glow through the trees ahead. I caught a whiff of smoke, and the scent of pork roasting on the wind. Sven barked again. He sounded absolutely delighted.

"A visitor!" Bulda yelled. The music cut off. I couldn't hear Anna's response over the general cheering.

I broke through the bushes and stepped into their clearing. The light seared into my eyes. I brought up my arm and squinted while they adjusted.

"Krissie's home!"

They all cheered. One of them grabbed me and spun me around. I landed on my ass for the second time that day.

"Take off your clothes, I'll wash them—"

"My clothes stay on!" I scrambled to my feet and blinked the last few spots out of my eyes.

They looked human: pale skin, green eyes, and greasy, dirty blonde hair. They were dressed in shades of olive green, with stained jeans. They blinked in unison. I didn't see Pabbie. A trailer squatted in the middle of the clearing, a few feet back from the bonfire. Its door hung loose on its hinges. The illusion held out, even to me, even when they hadn't been expecting extra eyes. Pabbie had told me that they wanted it, to appear human, at all times. _There were more of us, once,_ he had said.

Gravella turned the spit over the fire, and grease splattered off the pig's corpse into the flames and hissed. Sven dashed up to the very edge of the flames, jumped back, and ran up to the edge again, his muzzle extended over the flames and pointed towards the corpse.

Sven reached out his grey neck as far as he could stretch it and bared his teeth, and tried to tear into the flank of the hog—and he fell. Sparks flew.

I broke into a run. He howled, and he peddled back out of the flames. He collapsed onto his side in the dirt. The stench of burning hair cut through the smell of pork. Anna and I reached him at the same time. We both knelt next to him. "His nose," she said.

The side of his muzzle, and a part of his nose, shone bright red, and the scruff of his neck was missing hair. Sven whined. I said his name and pressed my hand against his shoulder. _Burns, you treat burns with ice. _I looked up at Bulda.

The air flickered around her when she met my eyes, and for a second she was short, and fat, and grey. But then it was gone. "Yes, dear?"

"I need ice, and Grand Pabbie."

Anna curled her fingers under the uninjured side of the dog's face and shifted his head into her lap. She scratched the soft, short fur behind his ear. "Hang in there. Everything's going to be alright." He looked up at her and thumped his tail against the ground, once.

Bulda nudged my shoulder. I jumped. I hadn't noticed her move. She held a blue freezer pack out to me. It shimmered in the firelight, and for a second it looked triangular instead of square, and it glowed bright blue, and it was translucent. "You know I can't use the crystals."

She smacked her forehead with her palm."You and your limitations, dear, so many I lose track." I stepped back to give her space. Anna was staring at me, eyebrows furrowed, until Sven turned his head and licked her hand. She bent back down over him and murmured something sweet and meaningless, and he slapped the ground with his tail. Bulda touched the crystal to his muzzle. He whined, again, and I gritted my teeth at the noise.

I pushed past Gravella and banged my fist against the screen door of the trailer. "Grand Pabbie! Sven's hurt!"

Nothing.

"I'm here." His voice came from behind me. I turned in time to see him step out from the edge of the trees. He looked the same as the rest, human, old, with grey hair tied back at the nape of his neck. "What's the problem?"

"He was greedy, tried to eat before I offered it to him," Gravella said. She laughed, and some of the others did too. "Right into the fire, plop!"

Bulda stepped back and let him kneel over Sven. He looked up at Anna. "Krissie's brought a girl home?"

She blinked. "Oh, I'm not—I'm nobody, I'm just—I'm just me, Anna."

Pabbie stared at her for a minute, and Anna faked a smile. It crumbled under his silence.

"Sven," I said. My voice sounded weird, and high, and breathless. I cleared my throat.

He grunted and lowered his head. "You should get something to eat, Anna. I need room."

Anna bit her lip and shifted out from under Sven's head. She took a few steps back and stared at the rest of us. Two of the trolls shifted, lifted the pig off the fire and dropped it onto the folding table leaning against the trailer.

"I'll get your plate!" Bulda clapped her hands together and practically floated over to the table. "Stana, turn the music back on!"

"No!" I ran in front of her. Anna's glance shifted from me to the rest of them. "She's with me. She's just looking for her sister."

Bulda sawed off a hunk of the pork with a saw-toothed knife. She plopped it onto a paper plate and carried it over, staring at Anna as she walked. The air shimmered and her crooked, white grin morphed into something—else. Her teeth went grey, pitted, rounded, turned into teeth shaped like tombstones, grave markers set into her gums, and her smile split her narrow human face in half. It reached all the way back to her ears. Anna gasped and grabbed my arm. "Oh, dear, just a bite won't hurt!" Bulda held up the paper plate and I shifted, again, so I was between the two of them. Anna dug her fingers into my bicep, her nails sharp, even through the flannel.

"She is with me," I said again. Slow. "We're just trying to find her sister."

"Suit yourself." Bulda shrugged and bit into the chunk of meat herself. It was a piece the size of my hand. She _slurped_, and all of it vanished inside her mouth. She sucked the juice off of her fat fingers and chewed. "_With_ you, huh?"

Pabbie got to his feet, and Sven bounded up to Anna and me, tail wagging. He held up a hand and Bulda swallowed whatever she had to say next. _Thank God. _"What does your sister look like?"

Anna looked from me to the trolls. _I'll explain later, _I thought, and I tried to make it obvious in my face. I was never good at that, the talking, but she must have seen something in my expression because she nodded at me and took a breath. "She's a little taller than me, kind of a similar face, but she has her hair cut short and dyed black. Spiked up."

_Oh, hell. _

I had met her. Not by name. It was after I had gotten an apartment and moved out. But I had come back and seen her, once, dancing with Bulda in a ring. She had taken a long, hard look at me with my low-slung jeans, my flannel, my feet, spread shoulder width apart, and she had laughed. I hadn't stayed long enough to ask her her name. I'd practically turned around and walked into the woods again before she had caught her breath. I got enough of that shit on the outside.

They all traded glances with each other. "Elsa," Pabbie said. "We know her. A thief. She fancies herself to be a witch."


End file.
